It's the season to watch for pardons coming from the White House and it doesn't seem likely any famous Houstonians will be celebrating clemency along with the new year.

Two Houstonians — former Enron executive Jeff Skilling and former Astros pitcher Roger Clemens — are on a watch list kept by P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor in Illinois who writes a blog on pardons and has written a book on the subject.

Skilling's lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, said no request is being made on behalf of Skilling, who is in prison and appealing his conviction. No other Enron defendants were on Justice Department request lists as of Wednesday.

But Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, notes that a clemency request would make no sense, since Clemens is not charged with any crime, although the FBI is investigating whether he lied to Congress about steroid use.

"That's an insane invention of people who have too much time on their hands," Hardin said of the question of a pardon for Clemens.

As a president prepares to leave the White House, speculation whirls about who might get the forgiveness of a pardon or the less frequently issued, sentence-shortening commutation. Most who apply won't be deemed worthy of presidential clemency.

"This speculation at the end of a term is a residue of the Clinton situation," Ruckman said.

He was referring to the 200 pardons Bill Clinton issued in the last two months of his presidency, including controversial ones such as that of campaign donor and fugitive financier Marc Rich.

"Maybe 10 or 11 pardons were anticipated before that, across years and presidents," said Ruckman.

But he still expects a number of clemency actions from President George W. Bush, who has granted more than his father did, but fewer than most presidents.

One pardon rescinded

Bush can still grant pardons until he leaves office in January. The last pardons from this White House came last week and in November when Bush pardoned, among others, a Conroe man convicted of illegal storage and disposal of hazardous waste without a permit.

On Christmas Eve, however, the president took the rare step of rescinding a pardon he had granted the previous day. Bush made that decision after learning more about Isaac Robert Toussie, including the fact that the Brooklyn, N.Y., man's father had donated $28,500 to the national Republican Party in April, before Toussie's pardon petition was issued.

Most of those receiving pardons are like Conroe's Daniel Pue III: people who aren't well-known and have lived law-abiding lives since serving out their sentences, experts said.

The speculation isn't really about the average cases in which people follow the rules and apply through the Department of Justice, which normally requires a five-year wait after a sentence was completed. It's more about the famous folks who may apply by the rules, or may choose to go directly to the White House through insider channels.

'A more perfect justice'

Thus, questions raised about who might receive pardons or commutations have focused on such names as WorldCom white-collar criminal Bernie Ebbers, who was imprisoned for corporate fraud; former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, who is serving a prison term for racketeering; and former Olympic sprinter Marion Jones, who was sentenced to prison for lying to federal investigators about steroid use.

"The pardon is a way of achieving a more perfect justice than the law can," Moore said. She said it was designed because the law can sweep so broadly that it calls for "a fine tool that can undo an unjust sentence."

She said pardons usually follow Justice Department rules about who can apply and how they must do it. But Moore said a president need not follow those rules.

Thousands of requests

Moore said Bush has so far skirted those rules only when he commuted the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who was found guilty of lying and obstructing a CIA leak investigation.

Moore said there is just no way of knowing whether Enron defendants or anyone else might be granted a pardon or commutation before Bush's term ends on Jan. 20. The Justice Department has received more than 2,200 requests for pardons and 8,000 requests for commutation during the current administration.

"It's really about whether someone even has a snowball's chance in hell," said Ruckman.

And when it comes to white-collar criminals, he said, they probably "are closer to a snowball's chance if they have served their time."

As for which pardon might best fit the criteria spelled out in the Constitution, Ruckman cited George Washington's pardoning of participants in the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion, which broke out after the young federal government imposed an excise tax on whiskey. The decision calmed a rebellion, Ruckman said, and many thought it was excessive to have charged and convicted those who fought the tax.